Originally posted by pub crawler
Nah, the Angels are deep in pitching. They'll be fine.

At sub .500 and 3rd place in their division, the Angies need not worry about the World Series.
Their GM (Stan D. Pat) needs to realize that hitting and scoring runs are integral parts of this game of baseball.

Originally posted by Hewson At sub .500 and 3rd place in their division, the Angies need not worry about the World Series.
Their GM (Stan D. Pat) needs to realize that hitting and scoring runs are integral parts of this game of baseball.

No denying it. But you seem to be forgetting that Stoneman came within an eyelash of signing Konerko -- the only big bat on the market last off-season.

Halos have two rookies in their lineup and both are struggling. My guess is that Jeff Mathis is going to struggle all year but Kotchman will eventually put it together.

But yeah, everybody knows the Angels' offense leaves something to be desired.

the worst is that he has his own radio show on espn radio durring drive time... 4 to 6... he gets absolutely destroyed in the ratings by mike and hte mad dog on wfan but anyhoo... every now and then if you pop it on, he actually yells at callers who say that he's a homer, and he believes that he's an impartial announcer.

come now hewson... know your crappy yankee announcers. you're speaking of john sterling, who does radio... not michael kay, who's on tv.

michael kay does the oh so clever home run call of "seeeee ya" and other non obnoxious things such as consistantly refering to the yankees as the greatest franchise in sports history and telling you how many career homeruns alex rodriguez has after ever single homer. and according to michael kay, derek jeter has never not hustled in his life. ever. he hustles getting out of bed. he hustles in the grocery store. he hustles to get to the dentist. he just plain hustles.

sterling has actually surpased the level of absolute shitfullness and is now actually fairly ammusing... sorta like bill walton, dick vitale and tommy heinson.

Never in most of our lifetimes has the following sentence inspired less (A) trepidation, (B) disgust or (C) outright panic:

Baseball's labor deal expires in less than a year.

Yep. Dec. 19 would be the date. Be sure to circle it on your calendar, so you can remember to hang Bud Selig's picture from your Christmas tree. It's just 7½ months away.

Amazingly, though, we sense virtually no chance of anybody doing anything stupid this time around. No strikes. No lockouts. No we'll-show-you power plays.

It's so un-baseball-like, all that keep-the-peace talk alone is enough to make us nervous.

But even in a $4-billion-a-year business, and even in a sport that has produced six different World Series champs in the last six years, there is still stuff that needs fixing.

And here is where we'd start:

At least four teams -- the Marlins, Devil Rays, Pirates and Royals -- are getting more money from their good friends at MLB than they're spending on their entire payroll (this is before they sell one ticket).

This is true. All of them, according to sources, rake in around $30 million in revenue-sharing handouts alone -- plus another $20 million to $30 million in TV, radio, Internet and Central Fund payoffs (generated by national TV contracts and licensing deals).

That comes to $50 million to $60 million, by our count. But their payrolls, by anyone's count, come to slightly less than that. Or, in the Marlins' count, to insanely less.

Well, we don't need to consult Alan Greenspan to know that needs to change.

But how?

This, of course, is why your trusty labor negotiators make the big bucks, to figure out this stuff. But the trouble is that the easy solution can't ever happen.

The easy solution: A minimum payroll. There's a concept you don't need an MBA from Harvard to understand. Pick a number between $50 million and $60 million. Sold.

Now here's the problem: The union isn't buying. And won't ever be.

It's a philosophical thing. This union is opposed to a salary cap, as you might have heard somewhere. So if it doesn't believe in maximum payrolls, how can it believe in minimum payrolls? That's the argument.

You've got to hand it to these people. They think you have to be consistent in life, even if it means teams are using their revenue-sharing monopoly money to pump up the value of their franchises instead of using it to pay the members of your own union.

We should probably mention here that the folks at MLB always deny that their revenue-sharing money isn't being spent properly. But even people in club management find those denials humorous.

So here's the problem: If you can't use a handy-dandy minimum payroll to force teams to spend their revenue-sharing dollars on better players, what can you use?

Well, it can be done. It probably won't be. But it can be. We've run this question by baseball people on both sides of this issue. And here's the simplest plan we've heard:

How 'bout this: Baseball just enforces its own labor deal -- or else?

We don't recommend that any sane civilian read the basic labor agreement for recreational reading. But those of us who have read it, proving we have no life, would recall a verrrrry important passage, right there in the middle of page 106:

"Each club shall use its revenue-sharing receipts ... in an effort to improve its performance on the field."

Hey, tremendous idea.

So maybe there's no need for a minimum payroll, after all. Maybe this concept just needs two small tweaks:

• (1) How about making that language a little more specific? Something like ... "Teams must use 100 percent of their revenue-sharing receipts for player payroll and/or draft-and-international signing bonuses only." And hire an independent auditor to make sure they do that.

• (2) And just to make really, really certain everybody follows this rule, teams that don't would have to return their welfare (er, revenue-sharing) payouts -- every stinking nickel of them.

So there. We just solved the industry's biggest problem -- in 100 words or less. We won't even require Bud to send us a thank-you note.

Now we need to mention there's only one minor hitch: It will never fly.

"They're never going to do that," one prominent baseball man told Rumblings, "because the small-market teams would never agree to it. Talk about welfare, there's zero incentive for these teams to take that money and spend it.

"If they get better, they draw more people. If they draw more people, they get a better TV contract and they sell more hot dogs. And if you do that, you lose your $30 million a year [in revenue-sharing money only]. Then you actually have to run your franchise like a real business and make it work."

That concept, obviously, would never catch on. So it looks like somebody has to go back to the drawing board. But not us. At Rumblings, we provide our consulting services once, and once only. From now on, baseball is on its own.

come now hewson... know your crappy yankee announcers. you're speaking of john sterling, who does radio... not michael kay, who's on tv.

michael kay does the oh so clever home run call of "seeeee ya" and other non obnoxious things such as consistantly refering to the yankees as the greatest franchise in sports history and telling you how many career homeruns alex rodriguez has after ever single homer. and according to michael kay, derek jeter has never not hustled in his life. ever. he hustles getting out of bed. he hustles in the grocery store. he hustles to get to the dentist. he just plain hustles.

sterling has actually surpased the level of absolute shitfullness and is now actually fairly ammusing... sorta like bill walton, dick vitale and tommy heinson.